Tour de France

Ok, I dropped out of the tour. Fell off I did! Not enough stamina I guess and then all those distractions along the way. I did get 1 and 1/2 bobbins of flax spun. I will wheel on as I can.

New Baby!

Here's the new Baby for this year.. A Filly Keeping with our weather theme for names Rod declared her "Tornado". She has a medicine hat and may keep most of the color on that. She is also sporting a shield on her chest! Born yesterday 7/28/09. Heheh I use this blog as a record to remember facts sometimes. That looks like her sister Lighting over on the right side of the picture. Mom's name is Cheyenne and the parents are registered on the Spanish Mustang Registry. Dad is pure white with one blue eye.

Tour de Fleece update

Well did not work on my tour this weekend. Am getting addicted to Farm Town on Facebook. I spend tons of time on that instead. Also Doing the Sunshine Ranch game. Maybe highspeed internet was not such a great idea to get more time. I just get into more things faster.
I did get the dye powders I got from Dori transferred to jars. At least some of each one. She sent an over abundance of each color. 15 colors! Now my porch and almost every thing on it is colored with tiny-to-large splotches of colors, mostly the turquise and one of the pinks. Interesting. At least the porch was in need of painting anyway so not a big issue. It does not come through well in pictures so no pix.

Tour De Fleece

Well I changed my mind about making it a murled yarn. I am going to spin and ply the colors seperately. I think I am going to use it for warp for some bookmarks for a weaving bookmark exchange. Gonna do a linen warp and woolen weft. Then it will be Linsey-woolsey! So keeping the colors distinct would be more helpful.

Tour de Fleece

I got started on my Tour de Fleece challenge on Sunday. After spending the day Saturday finishing what was on the old wheel I decided not to use that wheel as it is acting real putzy. So I got out a couple bobbins for the Mazurka and started with the natural colored flax that I found. It weighted 3.5 oz. then I will spin the bleached Irish flax (linen), which weighted 3.7 oz., and ply the two together for strength, which they say you don't need too but I want to use it for warp and not to sure of the evenness of my spinning. Some pretty thin spots there. Will work on it being more consistant but I like some variance so I am not too concerned. I love the tweady, barber pole effect of plying two different colors together too. Gives a lot more interest to the yarn. I think I will aim for a Linsey-Woolsy fabric. Traditionally that is Linen warp and wool weft. I got plenty of yarn around to use for the weft.

Le Tour de Fleece

I have Joined the Tour De Fleece
Rules are to set yourself a challenge that has to do with spinning. Can be almost anything this year to be completed between July 4th and July 26th. Mostly working along the times that the Tour De France race is running.
I have chosen as my project to locate and spin up some linen rovings that I have had for some time. I think they are around here somewhere so as soon as I find them and get the other project off the spinning wheel I will begin on my challenge. I can begin tomorrow by finding the rovings. I have never spun linen before so this will be a new thing also.

Old negatives

This is the coolest thing to do. I have a whole bunch of these old negatives from the 1940's into the 1960's. Most are outsized for modern photo printing equipment, so it is somewhat expensive to have them individually done at around $2.50 or more per negative. With over a hundred negatives and more curiousity than finances I am searching for ways to see these without it costing me a whole lot of $$. So this is the way I found this out. I called a local photographer who suggested putting them on a light box and photographing them with a digital camera. Find a photo program that will change positives to negatives and use that as it will do the reverse on a negative. Well I took the photo chip to the local photo place and they pulled the neg pix from the camera card and played with their program till they stumbled on the Way to Do It. Well in looking around in our programs for photos I found that I could do this myself. We have a Nero photo essentials program that will do this.

Some of the things that I have found out in doing this: No flash on the camera. Set your camera to text or museum or flower. Play around till you get the result that you want. You are going to have odd ghosts of things show up in the finished item this is not a perfect solution just cheap. If you really need perfect take it to the photo place and pay the $$. I also had to turn all the lights out in the room I was doing this in as any extra light caused more "Ghost" things to show up. Don't worry you can adjust a lot of the dark and light issues with most programs. Relax and have fun with it. Try not to loose your negatives always showing them off. I lost my first batch as I showed them to anyone who would be patient and kind enough to look. I lost em somewhere so I only have the pictures of the negatives that are on my camera card. Guard those negatives! Turn off the automatic dating of the pictures! You can crop it out but you loose some of the picture doing that!

Above picture was originally taken at Christmas 1952 by my Father. That is my Mother and my older sister looking over my older brother's shoulder to see what he got for Christmas and me over in the corner doing my own thing as usual. I can tell when this photo was taken by content and me being a baby. I was born in June of 1952.

We Got BroadBand Yippie

I found this gorgeous spinning wheel on and outing to a small town in Southeastern Mn. Mantorville. Was on a crafting retreat at a local retreat house The Milton House and wanted to investigate the town. This was one of the first things that caught my eye in the first booth. The town shops in that town sported two more wheels but this was the most unusual and prettiest. Anyone seen one or know anything let me know evesch@yahoo.com No markings found other than a grease penciled white numbers 55 on the bottom which may be a dealer's marking. It only has one serious issue that I can see. There are a couple chips out of the wheel part and the wood seems to be powdering in those spots. Wood Rot??? It does have some tiny little holes in various places around on the wood. Minor problems is the missing footman (no problem to make one) and no bobbins. Maybe another brand of bobbin will work or have custom made. The back maiden seems to be broken and comes out of its hole, should be attached to a turning thing like the front one. and it is missing it's finial. The wheel may be warped the sections are seperating but my other wheel does that and spins great so not worried about that too much. I am thinking about sending it off somewhere to have it repaired/looked at. Gotta see who does that. Since I put myself in the hole getting it, the fixing it may have to wait a while. It's still pretty but I am itching to spin on it!!!

Mom's Memorial service

We did the final service for Mom on Wednesday the 25th of March. There were about 30 people that came to the service and about 10 more support people ie: serving ladies, funeral directors, Pastor and wife, etc. The dvd of pictures was running while we greeted people and everyone seemed to like that very well. She recieved 4 plants and 5 floral arrangements besides the two that I had ordered. These are the two that I ordered in the photo and the Urn for her ashes. Very nice. Mom loved Gladiolas and the florist got some for the boquet. We had a nice lunch afterward. We planned for 50 people and had three sandwiches left and a couple handfulls of chips. The ladies brought cake and they were very good. Got to see a lot of people I had not seen in ages. Mostly from Henry's family. A step daughter and the kids of an old neighbor of Mom's, course they are in their 60's or so. We have recieved many cards of condolences and really appreciate them and knowing that people are thinking of us. Sometimes it seems so strange that the world and everything is still going on as usual! I want to scream at everyone to stop for at least a little while and notice that "My Mommy is Dead" This too shall pass. That is what I keep repeating to myself. I got lots of hugs on that day, just not the most important hug of all, my mom's........I will miss her a lot. Bye Mom.